Teacher Education Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Reflective teaching is a cyclic process of thinking about teaching.

In reflective teaching, the teacher plans, teaches, observes and evaluates what happened in the lesson, and uses that reflection to plan the next lesson, in a continuing cycle of improvement, an idea associated with John Dewey and Donald Schon.

It is not tied to the lecture method, it concerns one's own teaching rather than research in general, and it has nothing to do with preaching.

Answer: D

The answer is permissive discipline.

Permissive discipline gives children great freedom with few restrictions. It developed as a reaction against the harsh authoritarian discipline that many adults had experienced in their own childhood.

Authoritarian discipline is what it reacted against, democratic discipline seeks a balance through reasoning and shared rules, and motivational discipline is not the reaction described.

Answer: B

The year is 2030.

The National Education Policy 2020 states that by 2030 the minimal degree qualification for teaching will be a four-year integrated B.Ed. degree, a dual-major programme that combines teacher education with a subject degree. Teacher education is to move into multidisciplinary colleges and universities, and substandard stand-alone teacher education institutions are to be closed.

2030 is the policy's target year for several reforms in teacher education. The other years are not the deadline the policy sets for this change.

Answer: A

The one that is not a true aim of a refresher course is to give information about the teaching profession.

Refresher courses are in-service programmes for teachers already working in the profession. Their aims are to update their knowledge of their subject, to introduce new ideas, and to introduce new methods and techniques of teaching and evaluation.

Teachers attending a refresher course already know the profession, so basic information about it belongs to pre-service training or orientation programmes for newcomers, not to a refresher course.

Answer: C

An aptitude test should be used for admission to teacher education courses.

An aptitude test predicts a person's capacity to succeed in a particular field with training. A teaching aptitude test assesses qualities such as interest in children, communication, mental ability and attitude towards the profession, so it helps select candidates likely to become effective teachers, which is why it has been used in B.Ed. entrance tests.

An intelligence test measures general ability, not suitability for teaching. An achievement test shows past learning, and an interest inventory shows liking for an occupation but not the capacity to do it well.

Answer: D

The one that is not a device for modifying teacher behaviour is character development.

Teacher education uses specific devices to change classroom behaviour. Micro-teaching trains one skill at a time in a short lesson with a small group, followed by feedback. Simulated social skill teaching practises skills in role-played situations. Interaction analysis, such as Flanders' system, records classroom talk so the teacher can see and change his pattern of influence.

Character development is a broad educational aim, not a technique for modifying a teacher's classroom behaviour.

Answer: B

The key gives no professional organization which controls teacher's behaviour.

A full profession, like medicine or law, has a body of specialised knowledge, a long period of training, a service motive and, crucially, a self-governing professional organisation that sets standards of entry, enforces a code of ethics and disciplines its members. Doctors and lawyers can be struck off by their councils. Teachers in India have no comparable body that licenses them and controls their conduct, which is the usual reason given for calling teaching a semi-profession.

The lack of an oath is a formality, teachers are paid for their skills, and teaching plainly involves social service, so none of the other options explains why teaching falls short of a profession.

Answer: D

The function belongs to the SCERT.

The State Council of Educational Research and Training is the state's academic body for school and teacher education. Its listed functions include organising pre-service and in-service teacher education, developing curriculum and textbooks, conducting research, and providing extension services to teacher education institutions through extension service departments, so that colleges can reach serving teachers in the field.

The NCTE is a regulatory body that sets norms and recognises teacher education institutions. The NCERT works at the national level and advises the states. The State Board of Teacher Education is concerned with standards and certification. Extension services to colleges within the state are the SCERT's work.

Answer: D

The third component is performance.

The NCTE's document of 1998, Competency Based and Commitment Oriented Teacher Education for Quality School Education, built teacher education around three ideas: competency (the knowledge and skills teachers need), commitment (to the learner, the society, the profession and to excellence) and performance (the actual delivery of quality in the classroom and school). The three are meant to work together.

Progress, attitude and quality are general aims. Quality is the end the framework serves rather than one of its three components, and attitude falls within commitment. The NCTE's triad is competency, commitment and performance.

Answer: A

Such a course is a refresher course.

Under the UGC's scheme for the professional development of college and university teachers (run through the Academic Staff Colleges, now Human Resource Development Centres), refresher courses are subject-specific: teachers of the same subject attend together to update their knowledge of recent developments in that subject.

An orientation course, by contrast, is for newly appointed teachers of all subjects together and covers teaching methods, the education system and the role of the teacher. Summer institutes were short subject-based programmes of an earlier period, and faculty development programme is a broad term for any such training, not the subject-specific course the question describes.